Unreasonable Jottings

For reasons long forgotten I abandoned this blog  to start another: https://unreasonablejottings.wordpress.com/ a repository in which I can gather my occasional writings. Shortly I hope also to have up and running yet another blog: https://unreasonableart.wordpress.com/author/jrsfoster/ wherein I shall gather my attempts to practise visual art.

Tales of the Olive'

Through the better part of the past twenty years I have been eating at local tavernas in any of which I have yet to have been served a bad meal.  This must add up to a total of thousands of meals and, inevitably, there were occasional elements of meals which have been less than first-class.  Overall though I stand by my initial claim that food served hereabouts is generally fresh, well-presented and full-flavoured.  Menus however are tediously uniform; the menu of one taverna offers very much the same fare as the next.

'Tales of the Olive', a small taverna on the square at Petalidi, Messinias, is a sanctury from this sea of uniformity.  Owner / chef Mr Panagiotis has obviosly been taught his trade way beyond the borders of Messinia; he is both expert at finding first-class ingredients for the dishes he prepares and at preparing and cooking them.

Last Sunday, in the company of four chums, I enjoyed there four hours of slow food at its very best.

Flying home

Thankfully the bitterly cold pedestrian journey from the Hotel to the terminal building at Cork Airport last Tuesday morning was but a short one.  Inside the building we passed uneventfully through to the aircraft in which we were to fly to London Gatwick.  At Gatwick I enjoyed a reasonable lunch in Wetherspoon’s before saying adieu for the time being to Lisi and negotiating the labyrinthine Temple of Mammon which Gatwick Airport has become to find my 12.40 Easyjet flight to Kalamata.
There was a delay to board the plane which was then further delayed because it had missed its ‘slot’; we were advised that our new take-off ‘slot’ would be an hour henceforth.  I had no sooner adjusted myself to this disappointing news than the captain was again speaking to his passengers; to tell us that the plane could go at once.  As we taxied out towards the runway hailstones were coating the wing beside my window.  Above the screaming of the jet engines I could clearly hear thunder and see lightning flashing against a blackening sky; a further announcement over the aircraft’s PA system advised yet a further delay to allow the storm to pass over.  Twenty minutes or so later the aircraft was again trundling towards the runway.  Within minutes we were airborne, climbing into clear blue sky, and leaving the dark storm clouds behind us.  The roar of the engines eased a little and plane seemed to be climbing more gently, as it heeled a little to change direction I was able to look down on the irregular patchwork of sunlit fields below.  Suddenly the aircraft momentarily shuddered as a deafening bang shot though it; the machine had suffered a lightning strike!  The captain was quick to confirm this and to reassure his passengers that his aircraft appeared to be none the worse for its experience.  He had been told however to wait while the boffins at the airline’s head-office analysed data being sent to them from the aircraft’s on-board computers.  While we waited I enjoyed an aerial tour of Sussex, Kent, Hampshire and the South Coast.  Eventually news came that we would be going back to Gatwick where the plane could be further inspected.  But to go back to Gatwick was not quite so simple; the aircraft had been refuelled at Gatwick and was now too heavy to land safely, only by burning-off several tons of fuel could the machine be made safe to land; this would take ‘about an hour’!
After landing smoothly the captain rather cheekily welcomed his passengers to Gatwick where the aircraft parked in a remote corner of the airfield to be crawled over by technicians and inspected by others high up on ‘Cherry-Picker’ platforms.  Inside the aircraft the crew worked hard to ease passenger frustration by dispensing snacks and complimentary beverages.  After another longish interval the plane was declared unfit to fly; another would be found and flown to Gatwick with a fresh crew.
The replacement aircraft took off from Gatwick.well into the evening. When when it landed at sometime after one o’clock local time, five hours or so late, the passengers gave the crew a spontaneous round of applause.
My journey home did not end at Kalamata Airport I had over an hour to drive until I would be able to put my head on a pillow.  At the Airport it had been raining heavily; in places the road I had to drive was flooded and it was very dark but during the entire drive I hardly saw another vehicle and there was no further rainfall.
It had been an interesting day, an unusual experience which, by and large, I had very much enjoyed.

Lough Hyne: A venerated, ancient place

The Holy Well of Skour

For a long, long time lands here, around Lough Hyne in Ireland, have been occupied by humankind.  For four-thousand years people have left behind them material evidence of their having lived, died, worked and worshipped their deities here.

Sitting in the bay window of this cottage close to the edge of the Lough, the notion of the Lough and its purlieu having been a sacred place since the beginning of time sits quite comfortably with me.  It is an elemental place; earth and water are apparent to all senses, air manifests itself in the strong westerly winds which shape the crowns of trees, winds which, during winter gales, blow some of the trees to the ground to provide fuel for the fires that have burnt in hearths of homes hereabouts for millennia.  The majority of the tangible evidence of human occupation bequeathed to us is connected with religion and religious ritual; standing stones, stone circles and wedge tombs, giving further credence to the idea of this area having a long sacred / spiritual history.

The Christians were here early in their western history, as early as the sixth century Christianity had become the dominant religion of Ireland but there must, I believe, have been an established ritual paradigm onto which the early christian proselytisers were able to impose their social designs.  Indeed, as recently as the lately passed eve of the first of May, the Celtic festival of Bealtaine, a Christian mass was held at the ‘Holy Well of Skour’.  The mass has been celebrated at the well for no more than the past fifty years; earlier it had been the termination of an annual pilgrimage.  I can but believe that this ‘Holy Well’, where life-giving water rose from the depths of the earth, would have been held sacred long before Christianity was imposed on the people here.

Hayward Brothers

Here in this West Cork cottage, The Gate Lodge, Lough Ine House, there is a victorian, cast-iron, spiral staircase. The lodge, I understand was built around 1830. It is quite possible therefore that the staircase is original. It was, I believe, assembled on site from a number of standard components bolted together to make an exceptionally strong and secure staircase; a victorian version of an IKEA flat-pack. There are twelve stair sections, each cast as a one-piece step and riser, on one side the risers slot into each other to make a strong central column. On their outsides the stair sections are bolted together by extensions of bannister supports eleven of which are identical, the twelfth, first step, support is more substantial and has slightly different decoration from the others. The top stair section has had an extra piece fitted to it; another standard section minus its riser, to make a top-of-stairs platform into which have been cast the words, “HAYWARD BROTHERS . UNION STREET . BOROUGH . LONDON”. 

From my late teenage years this South Bank area has been very well known to me. In those days, the 1960s, it was a maze narrow lanes and alleys between tall brick warehouses around cobbled yards, pockets of Dickensian London yet thriving along the Thames. To stroll the area was a delight to the olfactory senses; scented spice importers traded cheek by jowl with leather tanners, wine merchants with importers of exotic foods. My own interests in Bermondsey and the Borough in those days were the paper merchants (Business) and a particularly excellent old wine bar (Pleasure!) but Haywood Brothers must have, unknown to me, been trading, if not manufacturing, in Union Street.

I know they were there because, finding the name cast into the top step of the staircase here, I searched the internet for further information about the firm. I found, 'Faded London' a blog put together by an individual with an interest in the historical minutiae of London; cast iron coal-hole covers being one of his special fancies. According to 'Faded London' the Hayward Brothers established their iron founding business in 1783 as a diversification from their existing glass manufacturing concern. For the better part of the next two hundred years they flourished, becoming, among other things major manufacturers of coal-hole covers. Apparently the business ceased to trade during the 1970s; a victim perhaps of the Clean-Air Acts and a growing preference for central-heating.

Baltimore Fiddle Fair 2015

Since 1992 a fiddle fair has been held in Baltimore.  Folk musicians from all around the world gather here for a weekend of concerts, pub sessions, workshops and musical fellowship.  As well as a host of local irish musicians, this year performers from Canada, Finland, Sweden, Scotland and the USA have ben bookd to play at the festival.

Because it was taken was taken in very crowded bar into which westering sunlight, streaming through a widow opposite me, shone almost directly into my camera lens, the photograph is poor. 

Back in Ireland

After a rather hectic four days in the U.K. it felt good on Wednesday lunchtime to be landing at Cork Airport.  It felt even better to be driving the winding, undulating and leafy main road to Skibbereen.  The weather was typically Irish; grey skies weeping showers alternating with blue skies broken by brilliant white clouds between which burst shafts of bright sunlight.

“Lough Hine House Gate Lodge”, home for Lisi and I for the best part of the coming two weeks, a delightful small stone building, it was built into a steep cliff directly on the track which, borders the lough until it starts to rise up to The “Big House”.

On its ground floor the 18th century lodge has a single rectangular room with a central open fire and chimney, the rectangle extends into a semi-circular, five window bay.  A cast-iron spiral staircase rises to the first floor where there are two bedrooms both of which have doors into a single bathroom.  Incredibly the substantial and heavy staircase was cast by Hayward Brothers of Bermondsey, London, presumably cast largely in component parts which were subsequently assembled here in the cottage.

When we arrived I retrieved the key from below the stone beside the door where I had been told it would be and entered the cottage to find a log fire blazing brightly in the grate; a warm and welcoming start to our stay here.

Thursday dawned bright and sunny.  The cottage, blissfully, has neither internet connection nor, tucked as it is under a steep rocky cliff, has it a reliable cell-net telephone connection.  To access the internet we are obliged to visit one of the many local catering establishments where internet access is offered to customers.  Yesterday mid-morning, to catch up on our mail, we visited “Apple Betty’s” café in Skibbereen.  After shopping for a while for items missed during our initial stock-up the previous afternoon I drove to Baltimore where, in the warm sunshine outside “Bushe’s” pub, we lunched on crab sandwiches washed down with Guinness.  This leisurely sojourn we followed with afternoon-tea at the recently refurbished “West Cork Hotel” in Skibbereen.  Finally, back at the cottage, we stocked ourselves with logs from the ‘big house’ woodyard and strolled the woods which are presently a paradise of dappled green-tinted light on a patchwork of bluebell and primrose.

Winter Work

Summers here are long, hot and dry; fire is a constant concern.  Years ago, when the house and its surroundings were a working farm, grazing animals kept the woodland understorey clear. These days there are no grazing animals here; in order to protect the house, and ourselves, as much as possible from summer fire outbreaks we spend a good deal of our winter days cutting, clearing and burning on managed fires the saplings, dead plants and unwanted shrubs which are the dangerously flammable woodland understory.    As well as affording us some protection this pleasant, albeit physically taxing, work makes accessible an otherwise impenetrable wilderness, opening up new vistas and liberating previously hidden, handsome rocks and fine mature trees. The cleared paths and glades admit more light, delicious dappled sunlight, transforming a dark wilderness into something of a pleasant, cool and shady park. Added bonus returns for our work are the wild-flowers that spring from seeds which have lain dormant the soil, in some cases for decades. 

I am aware that we are interfering with nature but the interference is only temporary; nature will reclaim what is hers soon enough.

Onward

I woke this morning to a new age, one in which I am labeled a year older than I was when I woke yesterday.  Strangely I feel no different.  Yesterday was the seventy-first anniversary of my arrival on this planet.  I marked the occasion by driving into the Tagetos mountains to enjoy lunch with Lisi at the Touristico Hotel on the summit of the Kalamata to Sparta road.  For the last few Kilometres before reaching the hotel I was driving between piles of snow-ploughed snow on a slushy snow-dusted road.  The hotel car park was covered with ankle-deep snow; the dining room was chilly but we found reasonably warm comfort at a vacant table near to a roaring, open wood fire.  During lunch snow began to fall.  A recently arrived family party occupying an adjacent table took fright, re-cloaked, gloved, scarfed and left to seek safer accommodation lower down the mountain.  By the time we departed, our car had become covered with a blanket of snow under which a rough coating of ice had frozen over the windscreen.  It was with some trepidation that I drove away from the hotel along a steeply-descending snow-covered road but there was little traffic to concern me and after fifteen minutes of so of very slow going we safely reached clear tarmac.

Will I remember this birthday?  As I can remember nothing of the other seventy it is unlikely.  If memorable birthdays are important, the fifth of January is not the best of dates to be born; particularly when they fall on a Monday!

Gathering firewood

For many years past, wood burnt on the stove that has kept us comfortably warm through the depths of winter has been olive wood we recover from a couple of the many olive groves on the hills behind our home.

The wood has to be earned.  Oil-olive harvesting practice here is one of simultaneously gathering olives and pruning trees.  The olives are carted off to be processed into oil; the prunings, mixture of leaves, twigs and branches, are left in the grove for subsequent clearing.  From the two groves in which we enjoy rights of common of estovers, in return for our clearing and burning the smaller material we gain all the pruned larger branches and logs.

There is some irony in that, this year during which we hope to leave here to relocate to Ireland, we may well bring home the largest haul of firewood we have ever known.

May Day 2014

Thank you Tracy for use of this photograph

Having no cattle to put out for the summer I honoured my May Day far, far away from any of the political rallies, military parades and church services that seem to have taken over this timeless celebration of the arrival of summer and its promise of further abundance; I celebrated the day by feasting, amongst chums, on roast goat liberally complemented with local wine at Maria's Taverna on the beach at Zapi.

Serving two masters

Spider at sunrise

I began posting to this blog in March, 2010. I was in Scotland at the time, a long way away from my home here in Greece.   I was there to help my sister to get our mother settled into a care home; she had had a fall from her bed in the house she had hitherto lived in alone since soon after my father died in 1993. The injuries she sustained necessitated that thereafter mother would need trained professional support for the rest of her life.

When, with my partner Lisi, I left Greece I had no clear idea of how long I would be in Scotland but imagined it would be perhaps three weeks; a month at the longest. In fact, occasioned by mother's further accidents at the care home and her subsequent admission to hospital, I was to remain in Scotland for the better part of three months by the end of which my mother had died.

Three months of being in limbo, largely between hospital visits, allowed plenty of time for thinking and writing; during 2010 I made eighty posts; in 2011 I posted seventy-three times.

At the beginning of 2012 I joined a drawing course, held locally and run by a retired from London professional artist. From then on the drawing / painting bug, latent apparently within me for years, bit and is yet tenaciously holding on. To keep a record of my artwork I began a second blog, “Engaging Right” to which I have posted most of the drawings I have made since its establishment. Inevitably “Sensateman” suffered.  In 2012 I posted to it only 37 times; to “Engaging Right” I posted 53 drawings.   Last year I managed 34 posts to “Sensateman” against 72 to “Engaging Right”. This year, almost at the end of April, this is my first post here; “Engaging Right” has had 37 posts this year.

It is a situation I intend to change. I very much enjoy expressing myself in both words and pictures.

Mathew (6:24) maintained, “no man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. “ but his masters in that context were his God and mammon, I am confident drawing and writing are far less opposed ideas.

I am inspired to again begin to blog here after stumbling across a post by a blogger I used to enjoy following. He did not blog particularly regularly but his essays were always a joy to read; well worth waiting for. Last year he posted once in January and again in February. This year he has posted twice in January since when there has been nothing. I wait in hope but am most grateful to him for shaking me out of my torpor and encourage me henceforth to discipline myself to make further occasional excursions into words.

To All Visitors to This and to my 'Engaging Right' Blogs

Yuletide Greetings!

“. . . The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had never known in Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see, who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge, as he came peeping round the door. . . . .             .

`I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,' said the Spirit. `Look upon me.'

Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.”

From, ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens 1843

Over the hills . . .

Yesterday morning, close-packed marble size raindrops falling heavily on the roof-light above my bed brought me to another day of consciousness.  It seemed to be a day better suited to driving than exploring local lanes on foot but by mid-morning when we were ready to leave the house the rain had ceased and warm sunshine beat down from a large patch of blue sky.

Back in May, when we were staying near Skibbereen, Lisi and I met there artist Kathy Pentek and each of us left her with a commission; one painting for myself and several for Lisi.  Yesterday, dawning inclement, we chose to drive across the peninsular to pick up our commissions.  I had left Kathy with a more or less free hand, my only constraints on her imagination being that the painting should have something to do with my birth-sign; Capricorn.  Kathy’s painting delighted me.  I can but be amazed at how an artist, having spent no more than an hour or so with a total stranger, has managed to produce a painting which has created so much impact on my senses; in a way, I see in this painting a fractured mirror of myself.

The mid-morning sunshine did not endure.  In swirling mists under a heavy, grey, marbled sky, sharing the landscape and road with no more than downs of insouciant sheep, we drove over the gorgeously spectacular Healy Pass.  Concomitant with the heavy rain earlier in the morning was the gushing, streaming, seeping lattice of mesmerising waterfalls and rivulets flowing down and over steep hill and mountainsides.

The three hundred metre high Healy Pass is named after Tim Healy, an early governor of the Irish Free State.  Previously called ‘The Kerry Pass’ the road was built during the famine years of the nineteenth century by poor relief workers.

The cottage at Drombeg

On Saturday morning Cellphone, Sat-Nav and Lisi with her map guided me easily through beautiful wild mountain countryside to Joe McCarthy’s house on the outskirts of Ardgroom.  Joe, to be our landlord for the coming two weeks, manifested as a genial smiling character who immediately led us in his car through twisting west of Ireland lanes to a distant corner of his farm on which stands the cottage which we have rented from him.  After very comprehensively settling us into the cottage Joe left us appreciate the beauty of the cottage and its breathtakingly beautiful location.  The two storey stone-walled, slate-roofed cottage, Joe told us, was built a hundred years ago by his grandfather.  During the twentieth century the building had fallen into disrepair until, during the nineties, Joe restored and renovated the property to create a comfortable two-bedroomed house suitable for holiday letting.  The cottage, a gem of a building, excellently restored and re-fitted is but nothing compared to its location on rising ground overlooking stone-hedged fields, Kenmare Bay beyond which rise the Kerry mountains.  There is no noise pollution here; peace, almost tangible here, is disturbed only by the music of rain on the windows, the song of the wind whistling around the house and the call of the Curlew.

The Dingle Peninsular

Cliffs, Dingle peninsular, Ireland

At around three hundred and fifty kilometres, the road journey on Thursday from Lough Key House to Moriaty’s Farmhouse at Ventry was, by my standards, a longish drive.  Lisi and I left Frances’ wonderful B&B about ten o’clock and arrived, after an uneventful drive through pleasant countryside, by-passing en-route the cities of Galway, Limerick and Tralee town.   Late in the afternoon we arrived at Moriaty’s Farmhouse.  Brid, our landlady, welcomed us by name which, as we were her only guests, would not have been too much of a problem for her.  The custom in Ireland seems to be for B&B hosts to offer tea and cake or scones to new arrivals, Brid followed the custom and when I asked where we might find an evening meal nearby she recommended to us to ‘The Skipper’.  Brid was right, it proved to be a very good venue for supper.  A few kilometres along the lane from the B&B, ‘The Skipper’ is an unpretentious but excellent fish restaurant.  French-born Paddy, its chef and owner, came to Ireland with his parents seventeen years ago when they decided to move here from La Rochelle.  I ordered pan-fried Brill under a Chanterelle sauce served with plain boiled new potatoes and a simple fresh mixed salad; a quite unexpected and delicious treat.

Abandoned village, Great Blasket

Friday dawned partly cloudy, promising improvement.  After a good breakfast we set off on a short circular tour west of Dingle.  The craggy scenery along this deeply indented rocky Atlantic coast is outstandingly picturesque.  Five kilometres off the coast are the Blasket Islands.  The history of these islands, uninhabited since the 1950s, has been very well documented by some of its late inhabitants; Tomás Ó Criomhthain, Muiris Ó Súileabháin and Peig Sayers have become literary legends through translations of their tales of life on the islands

into english and other languages.  Near the tip of the Dingle peninsular there is an impressive, purpose-built ‘Blaskets Centre’ which houses a comprehensive exhibition of everything to do with the history of the islands.  I spent a long time at the centre but to have closely examined all the exhibits I would have needed to be there much longer.

The Dingle Peninsular Tour beyond the western tip, the north coast, is scenically less dramatic.  We rather hurried along that part of the route to get to Dingle with enough time to explore the town.  Dingle is attractive but has, inevitably I suppose, been degraded to attract the easy tourist buck; there was something about pretty Dingle that seemed, to me, to lack authenticity.

In the evening I returned to Paddy’s ‘The Skipper’ restaurant this time to try (authentic!) fresh scallops in brandy cream sauce which I enjoyed quite as much as I had enjoyed my fish the previous evening.

Summer 2013, a review.

Caveat depascor!  Rather than being something that may interest my blog followers, this post has been written as an aide-mémoire to myself.  I shall be editing it as and when the records and notes I have made in many places come to light.

Burgundy, June 2013

My drive home in June from Ireland through Scotland, England, France and Italy was slow and comfortable.  I stopped frequently and, in France and Italy, found several B&Bs which were new to me and, in their originality and differences, interesting.

Tiled bathroom at amazing B&B:
'Il Torchio, Calco, Italy

By 27^th June I was home in Greece.  I had been away for two months during which much had happened around the house.  Seeds of all manner of plants, unseen when I left in April, had germinated.  Plants, largely unwanted weeds, many of them huge had, in hot wet spring conditions, grown set seed and were now dying for want of water.  Deep-rooted perennial plants had put on incredible growth; vines, just budding when I left, now drooped new growth heavy with leaf to make drapes of shade below balconies and across the steps I needed to climb to reach the door into the house.  But for a light layer of dust, inside the house was much as I had left it.

I had not been home many weeks when the first of my visitors arrived; my elder daughter, her partner and their two young daughters.  Two and half weeks later they all flew home on the plane on which my younger daughter and her three children arrived to stay with me until, on 20^th August they left with me to drive back across Europe to be in the U.K. by  Friday 30^th August to attend the wedding of Tom, Lisi’s second son, to his fiancé Kate.

The wedding service, held at one o’clock in the chapel of Wren’s Naval College at Greenwich, was memorable for both its setting and content.  During the afternoon the new Mr and Mrs Palmer treated their guests to cream teas on a chartered boat trip up river to the pool of London and back.  By early evening we had returned to the Naval College where the wedding banquet was held in the fabulous, ‘Painted Hall’.  The day finished with a wild party in the vaulted space below the ‘Painted Hall’; it was a day I shall remember!

I spent most of September drifting around in the U.K.  The week after the wedding I spent in a ‘Mobile Home’ on a pleasant site near Canterbury after which I travelled, with Lisi, to Lincolnshire where we house, dog and hen sat for her sister and brother-in-law while they took a short holiday in Florence.  From Lincolnshire we move on to spend a week in Derbyshire thence to Scotland to visit my own sister and brother-in-law and to visit The Helix, a project being overseen by my eldest nephew.

Work in progress building Andy Scott's thirty metre high sculptures at The Helix, Falkirk, Scotland.

Last Wednesday, free for a while of family commitments, we returned again to Ireland, driving as quickly as possible across the six counties to reach Carrick on Shannon late in the afternoon.

After a tasty early supper at the ‘Oarsman’, after an interval of almost four months, we arrived back at ‘Lough Key House’, to tea and a wonderfully warm greeting from Frances.

Big bed, Lough Key House, Boyle, Co. Roscommon, Ireland

   

Sunday 9th June 2013

Lough Key House, Boyle, Co. Roscommon. Ireland

Arriving on Saturday evening, I slept the night in this comfortable country house B&B.  I had spent much of the afternoon in and around Carrick on Shannon showing Elisabeth the many places I had visited a few weeks previously when I attended there the John McGahern seminar.  In town I renewed my acquaintanceship  Orlagh Kelly at her splendid ‘Reading Room’ bookshop and to eat again in the superb ‘Oarsman Gastro Pub’ a few doors along the road.

This morning Elisabeth and I had to make an early start for the drive up to Larne from where we took the midday ferry for Cainryan, Scotland for me to begin my drive home to a long hot Greek summer while Elisabeth took off from Glasgow airport for the cool of her summer in Iceland.

Before the end of this year, however, Ireland, The Reading Room and Frances McDonagh at Loch Key house will see us both back again.

Friday 7th June

Friday 7^th June was the last day of a delightful  sojourn in the cottage I had rented for a month at Knockanoulty, Baltimore, Co. Cork.  In the evening Lisi and I left for an evening drive to the delightful Derrynaflan in County Tipperary where our host Sheila O’Sullivan welcomed us warmly despite our rather late arrival.

As with most B&Bs at which I stay on my travels it would have been good to have stayed longer at this lovely place but, if I was ever to reach home, I had to press on with my journey, adding Derrynaflan to my lengthening list of places to which I hope to return.

5th June: Cathy Pentek and Sherkin Island

The day began with a visit to artist Cathy Pentek’s home in the country beyond Skibbereen.  Coincidentally the house was next door, albeit a kilometre or so further along and on the opposite side of the road, to the cottage we had rented last year when, in the course of our evening strolls,

Lisi and I must have strolled past Cathy’s house several times.  Cathy, surrounded by several dogs, was waiting at her

gate for us.  She led through her garden, where more dogs joined us as we all filed into the house to find yet more dogs occupying the living room settees and easy chairs.  I noticed too a number of resident cats and, as my eyes adjusted to the light, a fine black pig - house-trained Cathy told us - asleep in front of the television.  Cathy is an animal rescuer - a kind of latter day St Francis.  Shuffling for space with her animals we looked at several of Cathy’s charming paintings, bought one and commissioned some others then moved on into Skibbereen for coffee and cake at ‘Apple Betty’s’.

The Sherkin Island ferry leaves Baltimore at two-thirty.  We arrived there at one o’clock conveniently in time to enjoy my favourite Irish lunch, crab sandwiches washed down with a glass of Murphy’s Stout.  Sherkin Island, of which, during our few hours there, we saw not a lot is worthy of more time; on our next trip we shall take and earlier ferry.

The ruined fifteenth century abbey.